Ashot Sarkissjan was born on the 26th of February 1977 in Yerevan,
Armenia. He studied with Ara Bogdanian at the Tchaikovsky Music College in
his home town, at the Musikhochschule Lübeck, where his principal teachers
were Maria Egelhof, violin, and  Walter Levin, string quartet, and with
Mihaela Martin at the Hochschule für Musik Cologne. He is laureate of the
international competitions in Lublin and Mainz. Since his student years,
contemporary music has been a domain of  major importance for him. As
co-founder of the Ensemble Neue Musik Lübeck, he worked regularly with
students from the composition classes, premiering new pieces written for
violin or string quartet. He participated in the Academie du 20e  Siecle,
an annual summer course, organized in Paris by Ensemble
Intercontemporain.

Since 2002 Ashot Sarkissjan has been a member of Ensemble Intercontemporain (EIC) in Paris, where he worked with many composers including Pierre Boulez, Gyorgy Kurtag and Brian Ferneyhough. He has appeared as soloist with the EIC, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Stavanger Symfoniorkester (Norway) under conductors such as Sakari Oramo and Jonathan Nott, and also worked, on many occasions, with Ensemble Modern Frankfurt. 

Ashot has appeared as soloist together with the soprano Laura Aikin in “Le Sacrifice”, an oratorio for violin, soprano and ensemble by the Finnish composer Kimmo Hakola. He has performed in many European countries, but also in Russia and the US, and took part in such festivals as Lucerne and Lincoln Center in New York. In his concerts in Armenia, he has introduced many major works of the 20th Century, many never performed there before. He has also given master-classes in Paris and Cologne.

Ashot joined the Arditti Quartet in June 2005.

His violin is by Stephan von Baehr, 2002.